The Opinionator: ZoMG 1337 HaxX0Rz

Okay, so this is my Opinionation (I’m making it a thing) of the game Mindjack (more of a form of torture than a game, but whatever). So, just like in my Rage review, this is going to be incredibly efficient. I played probably 2 hours of Rage before giving up, but with Mindjack I played about 20 minutes. Incredible efficiency for the win.

So let’s jump into the pool of piss that is Square Enix’s shittiest game yet, which is saying something as they developed the entire Final Fantasy series. So the game starts out with you the player talking to some guy on a headset while stalking a girl in some airport or some shit. After the opening cutscene, you are given no instruction on what to do, so I just went and walked around. Then you find the girl talking to some new guy, and after your Skype friend tells you not to interfere, you go and punch the new guy in the head.

One of the two main themes of this game is what they call Mind Hacking, not Mind Jacking as you would think after reading the title. Then my thoughts went to, “Maybe the character’s name is Jack and he hacks into people’s minds”, but no – his name is Jim.

So after the not-so-awesome fight scene, the game asks you if you wish to continue playing. What the hell? Did Square know they were making a shit game and just decided to beg the player to stop playing? Another stupid decision was that pausing the game doesn’t pause the game, so before I learned this, I went to go answer the phone and came back to me having died. This is what we call a dick move, Square.

The game also never really explained the controls to the player (other than the normal “how to move” controls that basically EVERYONE knows by now if they play any kind of game). So the second main aspect of the game is cover-based combat (because we really need more bad cover based shooters *cough* Gears of War *cough*) but, boy, does this game need it. You die so easily and then you quantum leap into an enemy’s body to go and heal yourself and your teammates.

This would be an okay game mechanic if that when you leap out to an enemy and your partner isn’t dead, they try to heal your body. Then the AI (which is, to borrow the phrase, “Pants on head retarded”) takes your body over and will die again…

Square is really into making lots of small stupid decisions, aren’t they (along with a big one in the form of releasing this pile of donkey shit). The last thing I realised they did wrong was that they omitted auto-reload. When I die and have to reload a checkpoint, I don’t want it to ask me if I want to reload. That’s something I would expect from a PS2 game.

So, at the 20 minute mark (the point where i stopped playing), there was no story or plot in sight and coming from someone who likes a good narrative in games, this upset me and almost always does (except with something like Mario). The only semblance to a plot on the way was when that lady person hacked a door and the player’s character went, “Just who the hell are you lady?”, which I would have extended to everyone in this fucking game at that point. Then I died a bunch of times and said, “Fuck it, I’m done with this piece of shit.”

So my last point on this godforsaken piece of shit is that it looks like complete ass. And I don’t mean like how a Square game usually looks with the superb graphics but all the characters and environments looking stupid and idiotic (*cough* Final Fantasy *cough*). I honestly don’t set much store beside graphics because there are more important things in a game like story and gameplay, but come on, Square, I know you can do better than this.

I think Square Enix is happy they released this game so early in the year last year so its shittiness was marred by all the other shitty games released that year. Coming from someone who has only played a few Final Fantasy games and didn’t like what I played, I hope they go back to just making the same game every couple years, so at least a copy of Mindjack doesn’t get released again. That goes for the Kingdom Hearts series as well (I have never personally played one, but I am going to and I am sure it can’t be any worse than Mindjack). I can only hope that Nier, which is the next Square Enix game I plan on playing and maybe reviewing, is better than this game.